Something struck me as wrong sliding around on your knees like some kind of footballer celebrating a goal. As well as the end boss battle - I'm sure I remember glowing orange bits I had to shoot. It felt completely detached that boss battle. It was only a demo but it was enough to put me off the game.

I find the boss battles very immersive in Vanquish. The variety of level design in later levels keeps it interesting. There is a boss battle against 'Unknown' on later levels. This is a clever balance in strategic combat. It reforms in clever, visually morphing ways, that allows it to sustain it's robotic nature. It's weakness is when you manage to destroy it's robotic frame, this reveals a little robot man who is defenceless, but scurries away while you try to fire off a whole clip at him before he collects his robotic mish, mash of parts again, to rebuild his metallic defence structure again. Great fun..

..so is sliding on your knees R. Have you never been to a disco as a young lad, and slid across the disco floor on your knees, taking out your nan and half a table's beverages. ;-)

Vanquish is brilliant. Fair enough if you didn't enjoy it Ress, but IMO its craziness was one of its best features - it felt so much more interesting than Gears et al. Plus, as Gray says, they keep the level design surprisingly diverse. Perhaps my favourite was a very short but memorable section when you're running/boosting over a bridge as it collapses.

OK so I've played a couple of hours of the single player and 2 games of multiplayer.

Multiplayer seemed OK but there was only one lobby available online (TDM, and all other game types were dead) and it appeared to be in Japan - so I died a lot through lag. In other words on the server browser there was only one game. It's a defo slow paced affair but perfectly enjoyable - if you liked the slower pace of MP games like Rainbow Six Vegas 2 and Metal Gear Online you may like this. Although this is Third Person using cover. Might be some balancing issues as the shotgun seemed way overpowered but it's early days. I need to play more but it's defo no where near as polished as Gears for example. You need to be thinking retro but competent type multiplayer in presentation.

The single player. After a poor start the game picked up to be pretty enjoyable - in fact I found it hard to put down. Initially I thought oh my god Terminator Salvation crossed with Dark Void in graphical prowess but once you get through the first 30 mins the game starts to get going and the surroundings become less samey and less grey (a little). The graphics are largely goodish, once you get into Chapter 2, but they are hit and miss at times. Initially there is a lot of stop/start just learning the controls in a super drab grey factory with samey enemy in narrowish corridors. The first chapter is just a prologue, which goes on for around 45 mins, and is totally unremarkable. There is a section in the prologue involving swimming - and it's very poorly done. However, there are other non-shooty parts in the first chapter which are better and more enjoyable. Don't want to spoil it by mentioning specifics.

The second chapter really opens up into the outside world (first level of the demo is part of the second chapter) and there are areas which are narrowish corridors and there other more open areas where you can mix it up a bit with your approach. There are one or two boss fights (re: like demo) which are good and there is one super-huge boss which takes some killing - a bit shoot the glowy bits but I enjoyed it.

There was one section in the second chapter where you have to defend a teammate that was 'doing something' (no spoilers:-)) and unknown to me a crawler had dragged himself to my team mate to stop from his task - meaning my AI team mate had to back track and do it all over again. No restart the level - more restart the task in game. Nicely done.

The enemies so far have been varied. Snipers, shielded bots, big hard red bots that take more punishment and bigger mini-gun type bots. And looking at the in-game stats there are lots more bots to come. The enemy AI is really pretty good. They flank in the more open areas, rush you lol and crawl behind objects to take down friendly AI as well as yourself. One crawler snook up on me grabbed hold of my leg lol and set off a grenade. There are also drop ships and smaller hoverbots that drop off bi-ped bots into the battle. As well as spotter bots. Saying all this the game on normal so far has been super easy. So for all the good enemy AI I'm having no real trouble. It helps that you can revive yourself I suppose - avoids death and no return checkpoints.

Weapons wise there is a good variety (usual stuff you'd get in any game) but all weapons can be levelled up for extra fire power, accuracy, distance, ammo capcacity etc by spending in game credits (at shops) that you earn through killing enemy. There are also skills to level up using nanotech that increase health, defence etc. In other words some light RPG elements.

The voice commands work well most of the time but sometimes they have been frustrating - in that it wouldn't recognise my commands. Sometimes I was even shouting lol. You can use the controller instead to dish out team commands however.

There are A LOT of cut-scenes. Some quite long - 10 mins or more. However they are good, if a little clunky at times, but tell the story well enough and set the scene nicely. However, the cut-scenes make for a stop-start affair which can spoil the flow. The two main characters are good but all the others, so far, have merged into the background a little.

So far I'm really enjoying the game, after a very worrying start, but it has its flaws - dodgy graphics in places, some uninspiring sections that remind you of bad games we all know and love, but once you get into the game it starts to improve and it's thoroughly good fun shooting oodles of androids of varying types. The story is good if straightforward - no metal gear here lol - and some of the cut-scenes have some brutal mutilation of "hollow children" AKA humanoid bots which the story centers around.

The <>R<> rating based on a couple of hours is 7/10 - that might change when I complete more. Not a release day purchase but defo worth a play. Not regretting my purchase at all at the moment. However, when/if you play the game you need to get through the first 45 mins as it starts off a bit poorly IMO.

Nice 'R'. I can read your point of view quite well from your review. :)

Online mp's are always ropey at first. I'm sure it's because they are setting up the online as it opens up. Give it a month and i'm sure everything online will be open and running, with very little lag. What platform are you running this on R?